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Thursday, December 28, 2017

Touched By an Angel

There seem to be more people working towards achieving
Knowledge and Conversation of their Holy Guardian Angels these days,
and that's great. There also seem to be more people who want to look
like they've checked that box on the spiritual authority check list,
and that's not so great.

A friend recently noted that we see a lot of people who
describe their experience as if it was one super cool moment, and
then it was done. Nothing changes after, there is no relationship
after, they did it, they have it in their back pocket that they did
it, and they don't have much of anything useful to add to the
discourse that reflects their experience. They generalize the angel,
or reduce its nature to something relatively meaningless, or treat
attaining the angel like a badge they get for leveling up and then
moving on. The experience is doing the thing, and saying they did the
thing, and that's all it is; it's another experiment with another
grimoire or another technique and they met the spirit and it was cool
and that's it, right?

Nope.

It's a pretty immense fantastic experience when it
happens. And to some degree that initial experience is momentary.
That momentary experience exists to create a powerful on going
relationship. Think of it sort of like a friend. You can call up a
friend, hang out, have a good time, and then go your own way, getting
together as needed. But say you and that friend have some sort of
life changing experience which shapes the both of you, that creates a
bond which ties you together and lets you share an intimacy you don't
have with others, so there is a connection which is always there. The
moment in the oratory where you complete the retreat is like that. It
is a moment so full of force and fire that it forges a bond between
you and the angel which is unlike that of other spirits with whom you
interact.

Now, based on many approaches to understanding the
angel, there is already a bond between you and your angel before the
retreat. I would question whether or not all of these other
descriptions of Guardian Angels and Holy Guardian Angels are
necessarily talking about the same thing as what is described in The
Sacred Magic, in fact, I would assert that in many cases they aren't.
That said, in my experience, yes, your angel is there from the
beginning, and you can and should make contact before doing the
retreat. The retreat changes the nature of the bond and the contact,
probably mostly on our end, but still, there is a perceptible change,
which changes us and how the angel interacts with us.

I very rarely reference things Aaron Leitch says, and
initially when I saw him compare Knowledge and Conversation to being
Crowned by a spirit I mistook his meaning, and I avoided the
comparison. But really, it is pretty apt. Knowledge and Conversation
is a form of possession.

People tend to think of possession as it appears in The
Exorcist, or The Exorcism of Emily Rose, or other cinematic
depictions. Both of those examples are based on true stories, to some
degree, but they both take cinematic license and make things visually
shocking for horror movie audiences. Still, there is a reality to
that kind of possession. Possession can refer to a point where a
spirit takes over a person, and torments them. Possession can look
like madness.

But that's not the only kind of possession, and even in
the case of a spiritual assault there are stages to possession. In
magic, where we find possession occurring as choice in which the
magician has a relationship with the spirit these stages are more
clearly understood. Unfortunately most European Magic (as Western is
an inaccurate description) no longer contains spirit possession work,
so for most people exploring Holy Guardian Angels, spirit possession
means spinning heads and pea soup.

So first you should understand that possession occurs in
different stages. In Catholicism there is Courting, Obsession, and
Possession. When a spirit is courting someone it is exploring
weaknesses which would open that person to possession and tempting
them into situations to exploit and exacerbate those weaknesses. The
spirit might directly influence and inspire the person and attempt to
draw them in. When a spirit is obsessing someone the spirit has made
contact and presents the person with things they desire and draws
them towards desiring a relationship with the spirit or opening up to
that spirit's influence. The obsessed person is oppressed by the
spirit as the spirit begins to exert some control., often by
impacting their well being and weakening the person's resistance to
their influence. Possession occurs when the person succumbs to the
obsessing spirit and control is relinquished. Finally an integration
would occur if the person willingly gives themselves over to the
possessing entity.

These stages all take a pretty negative view on the
subject because in Catholicism possession is almost always an
involuntary and negative act. Catholicism does however provide a lot
of the framework for European spirit magic and so an awareness of it
can be useful as a way for setting up our thinking.

Another way of looking at it based in Afro-Caribbean
traditions would be that in stage one the spirit sits on you or next
to you, you can feel the presence of the spirit, it touches you, you
can communicate with it, but aside from a more intimate awareness of
it, you're still in the driver's seat, and you can break off from the
contact. A second stage involves the spirit more intimately
connecting with you such that it can influence and take partial
control. You're aware of what's happening, mostly, and you can exert
some control, but you and the spirit are kind of sharing control of
the steering wheel. The third phase is when the spirit is in full
control, and you act as the spirit, you may or may not have awareness
and it may or may not communicate with you so much as through you in
this process.

Knowledge and Conversation is somewhere between stage
one and stage two, which would fit somewhere close to the obsession
stage in a Catholic context. But in the case of Knowledge and
Conversation it is voluntary on our parts, and so that gives it an
integrated element, which makes it like he reception of a Head
Spirit, or being Crowned, in which the spirit with whom you work, by
whom you are possessed “resides” with you and so there is an on
going relationship in which the “stage” or the clarity of
contact, moves on a scale as per the context of the particular
moment.

To go back to Hollywood as a means of
illustrating...Death Note is a good example. The relationship between
Light and his God of Death is a good example. Ryuk is always there,
even if he's just sort of in the back of Light's awareness. They
communicate, Light gets answers and suggestions from Ryuk. Ryuk isn't
in control but his presence impacts how Light is able to approach
things and Ryuk is at times able to facilitate things for him. On
some level it looks kind of like a relationship with a familiar
spirit, except that Ryuk exerts influence just by virtue of his
connection to Light as well as directly by what he communicates,
rather than a familiar, who generally performs tasks and provides
information but without that same influence. The recent Fox TV series
version of The Exorcist has also depicted this phase of possession,
albeit in a negative context, in season two of the series. Andy, the
possessed individual, initially experiences the possessing spirit as
a girl who he believes to be one of his foster children. She suggests
things to him, influences what he does and how he makes decisions,
she isn't always with him but she's always watching and can make
suggestions to or influence Andy pretty much whenever she chooses,
but still she's not ultimately in control of him.

Recently when talking with the same friend who pointed
out that some people treat the Holy Guardian Angel like a One and
Done kind of thing I described it like this:

“By possession I mean like first/second stage The
spirit is touching you so it knows and understands you and is able to
freely talk to you, but it's there like generally. Like not every
waking moment but at any given moment it can interact. It's
intimately in the space of your being; still identifiably separate
though, but it doesn't feel dissociative. It is like a partner who
sits in your sphere and kind of comes into your ear when he needs to
speak.”

I could go into what talking to it is like, or how this
relationship impacts magic and divination and other spirit work...but
if I did all that in one blog post it's seriously limit what I'd have
to talk about later.

In any case, finishing the Abramelin, or Liber 8, or
Samekh, or whatever ritual you intend to use to achieve Knowledge and
Conversation is great, and it's important, but it isn't really the
goal or the prize. That all comes later, and is the unfolding
relationship which completing the ritual catalyzes. It's not just
that single moment, but rather the way in which it affects all the
later moments.

Speaking of relationships...once again, if you liked
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